Another US precision-guided #weapon has apparently been foiled by Russian electronic warfare, a #Pentagon official said.
The munition, which was rapidly developed and transported to #Ukraine, is just the latest to fail in combat, highlighting the growing challenge of countering cheap Russian jamming tactics.
Last week, William LaPlante, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said a new version of a US precision weapon had failed to hit Russian targets partially because of Russian electronic warfare. LaPlante told a Center for Strategic and International Studies panel that the ground-launched weapon, a version of an air-to-ground system, had been quickly developed and deployed to Ukraine after relatively limited safety testing and little operational testing.
Once the weapon arrived in Ukraine, "it didn't work for multiple reasons," LaPlante said. Those included electromagnetic interference and complications from launching the weapon on the ground. "It just didn't work," he said.
If this weapon did fail, it would not be the first US precision-guided weapon foiled by Russian electronic warfare. The Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, a valuable weapon for Ukraine that can be fired from its US-provided High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, and Joint Direct Attack Munitions have both been reported to repeatedly fail because of Russian jamming.
In December, Lt. Gen. Antonio Aguto said electronic warfare directed at some of "our most precise capabilities is a challenge."
In March, Daniel Patt, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told Congress the GPS-guided Excalibur artillery shells "had a 70% efficiency rate hitting targets when first used in Ukraine" but that "after six weeks, efficiency declined to only 6% as the Russians adapted their electronic-warfare systems to counter it."
#Russia
https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-cheap-electronic-warfare-keeps-beating-us-precision-weapons-2024-4
